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Jörg Niewöhner Patrick Bieler Maren Heibges Martina Klauser

Abstract

This paper introduces the notion of ‘phenomenography’. Phenomenography is an ethnographic research practice that attempts to combine practice-theoretical approaches (praxiography) to investigations of human-environment-technology relations with phenomenological perspectives on knowing and experiencing these relations. It is rooted within relational anthropology (Beck, 2008). The paper introduces a set of basic premises guiding phenomenography before relating four short empirical sequences the analyses of which suggest specific analytical sensitivities: mind, brain and body in social interaction; knowledge and experience in psychiatric treatment; reproductive technologies in shaping sociality and kinship; (digital) infrastructures’ impact on ways of being-in-the-world. The paper concludes by defining phenomenography as a collaborative research practice that aims to curate concepts jointly with research partners and that aims to provide a new form of reflexivity within anthropology. 

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Keywords

phenomenography, relational, practice theory, motes of being-in-the-world

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How to Cite

“Phenomenography: Relational Investigations into Modes of Being-in-the-World”. 2017. Cyprus Review 28 (1): 67-84. https://cyprusreview.org/index.php/cr/article/view/35.